How I Left Corporate Regulatory Affairs and Built a Six-Figure Consulting Firm

By Lindsey Folio · May 24, 2026

A few weeks ago, I was cleaning out an old closet and found a note I had written to a friend more than 15 years ago.

In it, I described a shared dream: move to the West Coast, start our own consulting business, build something on our own terms. That idea had been living in me for fifteen years before I ever acted on it. Fifteen years of thinking "someday." Fifteen years of being good at my job — respected, credentialed, well-compensated, while quietly knowing I wanted something different.

I want to start there, because I think it changes what this story is really about.

This is not a story about a woman who hated her job and finally escaped. It is a story about a woman who had a dream for a very long time, and finally found the courage to take the leap.

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What I Was Actually Walking Away From

I want to be honest about what "leaving corporate" meant for me, because I think the way people talk about it tends to skip the real part.

I was not miserable in my job. I was not being mistreated. I was good at what I did — regulatory affairs for medical device companies, helping teams navigate the FDA clearance and approval process — and that competence had real value in the market. I was respected. I had a salary, benefits, and the kind of professional credibility that takes a decade to build.

If my job had been terrible, the decision would have been easier. But it was not.

The year I decided to leave corporate was one of the most chaotic of my life.

We were moving to a new town. Getting married. Buying a house. Having a baby. And I was actively choosing — in the middle of all of that — to walk away from a stable corporate job I was genuinely good at.

In a year when everything else in my life was in motion, there was a very rational case for staying put. The rational case lost.

What I wanted more than the security was the ability to control my days. To decide when I worked, who I worked with, what I said yes to, and what I said no to. I wanted to be there for the things that mattered for our brand new beautiful daughter. And I knew, at some point in that season of massive life change, that the only way to build the life I actually wanted was to build the business that made it possible.

I had already started building quietly on the side. One very part-time client. Enough to know the market existed, not nearly enough to feel secure. But I have a husband who had complete confidence in me, and I knew deep down I could figure it out.

So the week before our daughter was born, I left my corporate role. Three months of unpaid maternity leave. And I told myself, with fear rattling my brain, YOU ARE DOING THIS.

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The Fear Did Not Go Away

Here is the part of the story that most people leave out.

I did not land a client right away. In the early days, my daughter would be with the nanny and I would sit down to work — and I had nothing to work on. No clients. No immediate prospects. Just the terrifying open space of having made a very big decision in the middle of a very big year.

I was reaching out to people. I was having conversations. I was doing what I was "supposed" to be doing and nothing was converting.

The fear continued to grow day by day.

What if nobody actually hires me?

What if my expertise only had value inside the companies that employed me?

What if I just made a catastrophic mistake, in the middle of the biggest year of my life, and I am about to let my family down?

Here's where your courage has to grow right along with it. If you are thinking about starting a consulting business, you will feel this too. Maybe you are already feeling it. It does not mean you made the wrong decision. It means you are doing something on a different path, and the stakes are real.

What I did not do during that time was quit. I kept reaching out. I kept refining how I was positioning myself. I got more specific about who I was talking to and what problem I was solving for them. And eventually, not dramatically, not overnight, I started to gain traction.

My first client came from my existing network. So did my second. The business started to build.

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What the First Months Actually Taught Me

Looking back, that stretch without a client was one of the most important parts of building this business.

Sitting with that fear and choosing to keep going anyway is what I think real courage is. Not feeling brave. Not having certainty. Just refusing to let the fear make the decision for you.

The thing about fear in those early months is that it does not respond to reassurance. It responds to evidence. And the only way to create evidence is to stay in motion — even when the motion is not producing results yet. So I kept reaching out. I kept sending emails. I kept showing up to conversations that went nowhere, and I used each one to get a little clearer about what I was actually offering and who I was offering it to.

Fear tells you that not converting means you were wrong to try. What I learned is that not converting is information. Am I talking to the right people? Am I describing what I do in a way that lands? Do the people I am reaching out to actually have this problem, and do they have the budget to solve it?

Those questions, asked honestly and without ego, are what led me to a sharper niche and eventually to clients. Fear did not go away when things started to work.

But it quieted. And the version of me that came through those months, the one who kept going anyway, turned out to be the version capable of building something real.

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The Part Nobody Tells You About Identity

There is a version of this story where I tell you that leaving corporate was a straightforward business decision, and I just needed the right strategy.

That would be a lie.

The hardest part was not the legal setup, the contracts, or even landing the first client. The hardest part was the identity shift: from "employee with expertise" to "owner of a business built on that expertise." Those are fundamentally different ways of seeing yourself, and the transition does not happen because you filed an LLC.

It happens slowly, through actions, all of which require bravery. Through sending the first outreach email. Through naming a rate and holding to it. Through signing your first contract as the consultant, not the employee.

I had been a professional in regulatory affairs for over a decade. My expertise did not disappear when I left my employer. But it took time, and it took those uncomfortable early months, to fully believe that.

If you are waiting to feel ready before you start, here is a different frame: you do not feel ready, and then you start. You start, and that is what makes you ready.

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What I Built, and What It Actually Gave Me

Folio Consulting Group has grown into a firm that works with early-stage and growth-stage medical device companies preparing for FDA clearance and approval — the work I had spent years doing as an employee, now on my own terms.

I have a team. I have clients I genuinely respect. My husband, who was working a job that wasn't fulfilling him, was eventually able to leave it and join me. We work together every day. That was not something I could have planned, but it became possible because I built something that I own.

And I have what I wanted most: a calendar I control.

I am at the school events. I take the afternoon off when it matters. I say yes to what is important and no to what is not — not because I found some magical nonexistent work-life balance, but because I built a business where those decisions are mine to make.

That is the actual product of this work. The revenue matters. The firm matters. But what I was really building, from the very beginning, was the ability to decide for myself.

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Why I Built The Consulting Route

After several years of running Folio Consulting Group, I started getting a consistent question from women in my network: "How did you do this? Can you walk me through how you actually started?"

I answered it dozens of times in coffee conversations, phone calls, and emails. And eventually I realized: I need to teach women how to do this.

Not a vague "believe in yourself" course. A practical, structured, step-by-step guide that takes a woman with real professional expertise from "I've been thinking about this for years" to "I have a registered business, a defined niche, a pricing structure, and a client." Including the parts nobody talks about — the stretch where nothing works, the fear that comes back, the identity shift that is harder than any legal form.

That is what The Consulting Route is.

It is everything I wish had existed when I was sitting in maternity leave, reaching out to my network with one hand while holding our brand new baby with the other, wondering if I had made a terrible mistake.

You probably have not made a terrible mistake. You have made a decision that requires support, structure, and someone who has actually done it.

That is what I am here for.

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If You Have Been Thinking About This

You are not waiting because you lack skill. You have expertise that other people pay a lot of money to access. You are waiting because you are not sure it will work for you specifically, because the fear is real, and the stakes are real, and nobody has shown you the actual route.

The fear does not go away once you start. It continues to visit, sometimes weekly, as you strive for more. What changes is your relationship to it. You learn to recognize it as the signal that this matters.

I kept going — you can too. What I have built today did not come all at once. It is slow, incremental building, and it becomes something you and your family can be proud of every single day. You can do this. You just need someone to show you the route.

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The Consulting Route is a self-paced online course for professional women who are ready to start independent consulting businesses. Learn more and enroll at theconsultingroute.com.